This invention generally relates to lawn sweepers and, more particularly, to lawn sweepers with motor-driven brush assemblies and reducing mechanisms.
Lawn sweepers are generally well known and typically have a tubular frame and a durable fabric or vinyl bag attached thereto. At least two wheels are disposed proximate the front of the conventional lawn sweeper and are used to drive a brush assembly, also proximate the front of the lawn sweeper, through either gearing or a belt and pulley combination. Although having the brush assembly driven by the wheels is a more common configuration, it is also generally known to drive the brush assembly using an electric motor. Conventional lawn sweepers are either of the push-behind variety, where a user manually pushes the lawn sweeper around the area to be swept, or the trail-behind variety, where a user hitches the lawn sweeper to the back of a tractor, all terrain vehicle, or other such vehicle, pulling the lawn sweeper behind the vehicle to sweep an area.
A typical problem confronting the user of a conventional lawn sweeper is that the bag tends to fill up quickly, especially when sweeping up dried leaves and other such debris that piles loosely with a large amount of free space within the pile. It would therefore be desirable to have a lawn sweeper with a reducing mechanism within the bag or collection container that would reduce the volume of the debris collected by removing at least some of the empty open space within the pile to allow the debris to pile more densely. In this way, such a reducing mechanism would allow more debris to be collected before emptying the bag or collection container.